Coherency
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: "But Yui's senses failed to warn him that while Hayasaka may not be watching the board that doesn't mean he's not paying attention to Yui himself." Hayasaka pays attention and Yui struggles with coherency.


Hayasaka is not paying attention, and Yui knows it.

He's been feeling the other's focus sliding away as he continues in his explanation, is certain that at this very moment Hayasaka is definitely _not_ looking at the played-out game of Shogi in front of them. Yui doesn't have to look up to confirm this; he trusts the skills he's trained, and those skills say Hayasaka isn't listening to a word he's saying.

"This was the fatal misstep," Yui continues, gesturing towards the case in point. Even without an audience, he can't stop the flow of his recital; at this point Hayasaka could get up and walk away and he'd keep going, if only to satisfy himself that his description is complete. "You lost sight of the trap I had laid for you-" another gesture, a toss of his head to flip his hair out of his eyes. "Here." He's smiling, now, pleased by his own cleverness even as he reflects on Hayasaka taking the bait; there's a satisfaction in victory, after all, even if he's playing against a student. "Understand?" Yui says, and looks up at Hayasaka.

He's not watching the board. That is no surprise; Yui's senses warned him of that, told him that the other's attention was wandering. But his senses failed to warn him that while Hayasaka may not be watching the board that doesn't mean he's not paying attention to Yui himself. Yui had expected the other to be staring towards the window, gazing distraction out past the clean-clear glass; he was definitely _not_ expecting the gaze that is, as it turns out, fixed on his face, steady and unblinking.

"No," Hayasaka admits, immediately, without a trace of hesitation at owning up to his lack of comprehension. "I don't."

Yui heaves a sigh, reaches up to straighten his glasses. "If you don't pay attention to what I'm talking about it won't make sense. Improvement requires dedicated effort from those who wish to devote themselves to a cause."

"Yeah," Hayasaka agrees in the vague, barely-there tone of someone paying no attention at all to the conversation. Yui looks up to meet his steady stare, feeling a frown shaping itself on his lips.

"Stay focused next time," he insists, looking away from the other's continued gaze as he sweeps the pieces on the table together into a neat heap. "If you never get any better I'll never have anyone to play with."

"Yui," Hayasaka says, his voice dipping into a strange resonance on the familiar sound.

"Yes?" Yui says, pulling the pieces into neat rows to set the board up for another game before he looks back up to Hayasaka. "What is it?"

Yui prides himself on his quick reflexes. He has honed his skills, has dedicated hours to training his abilities, but his reflexes are a talent, one he makes great use of in his chosen pursuits. So he can't explain why it is that when Hayasaka reaches out for him he doesn't flinch away in time to dodge the contact. He has plenty of time to see it coming; Hayasaka rocks his weight back for a moment, lifts his hand, reaches out across the width of the Shogi board. Yui can see the approach of the other's fingers, the intention clear in Hayasaka's movements, and yet he neither leans away nor ducks sideways nor slaps away the touch in question. He just stares, still and wide-eyed, and then Hayasaka's fingers are sliding against his jaw, and everything in his head goes still and ringingly silent.

Hayasaka's hand is warm. Yui notes this, in some distant, perfectly calm part of his mind; he can feel the heat of the other's body at his fingertips, the faint friction of calluses catching at his skin. Hayasaka's touch skates against his jaw, fits in just against the side of his neck and under his ear, and still Yui isn't moving, is barely even breathing for the heat of that friction against his skin.

"You're really attractive," Hayasaka says, calm and level like he's stating a fact or making an objective observation.

"Ah?" Yui says. That's all he has air for before his lungs are empty and he is left with the ache of a vacuum in his chest and no functioning knowledge of how to remedy it.

Hayasaka stares at him for another long moment. His eyes are caught in the shadow of his hair; Yui can't distinguish the details of their color, can't read anything from his expression or the flatline calm of his mouth. He looks like he's considering something, or maybe like he's bored; Yui can't decide which, even when Hayasaka takes a breath like he's decided something.

"Alright," he says, answer to some unspoken question, and then he leans in and brushes his lips against Yui's.

Yui doesn't shut his eyes. Yui doesn't lean in to return the kiss. Yui doesn't so much as take a breath for the entire span of time it takes Hayasaka to lean in, press the glancing kiss to his mouth, and then draw back just far enough to remove the lingering contact. There's no panic in his body; he's not actually sure he's still alive at all, given how shocked-still his heartbeat seems to be. Everything is very clear, and very distant: Hayasaka's hand is still against his face. There are strands of blond hair brushing his forehead, tangling themselves with his own. His mouth is damp, warm on alternate breaths by Hayasaka's exhales.

Hayasaka just kissed him.

 _Hayasaka_ just _kissed_ him.

"Hhh," Yui says.

"You okay?" Hayasaka asks. His voice sounds weird, lower or rougher than usual; Yui isn't sure exactly which because his heart is pounding hard like it's trying to make up for slacking off for a few seconds, speeding into frantic overdrive in his chest, and his head is skidding so fast over thoughts that none of them make any sense.

"Nnn," Yui says.

Hayasaka laughs. It's a tiny sound, more a huff of air than anything else; Yui doesn't think he would notice at all except that the other boy is so close it spills into his mouth and hot over his tongue.

"I'm going to do that again," he says, and it's not meant as any kind of a warning because he's moving as fast as he speaks, nearly pressing the last word against Yui's mouth before it can be heard.

It's longer, this time. Hayasaka lingers long enough for Yui to process several things: the weight of his mouth, for one, the soft of his lips for another. The heat of his skin, how he can feel the quick inhale Hayasaka takes through his nose as they stay together. How hot his own skin is going, his cheeks flushing into color he can feel sweeping out over the whole of his face before Hayasaka pulls away again.

"I wasn't paying attention to the game," he admits, leaning back to enough of a distance that Yui can see the dark-shadowed gold of his eyes and drawing his hand away from the other's skin. "Sorry. I was thinking about doing that instead."

There's a pause. Yui thinks perhaps this is intended to give him a chance to respond, to offer some eloquent quip or maybe just to slap Hayasaka for his impudence and storm out of the room. But he can't remember how to speak, and if all his skin is prickling hot it's not _unpleasant_ , exactly, and also he can't stop staring at Hayasaka's mouth. He's pretty sure it never looked so soft before.

He's still staring when Hayasaka brings his lips together, swallows deliberately. "Yui?" Yui drags his gaze up, pins his attention on Hayasaka's eyes instead of his mouth. They're soft at the edges, the shadow of his eyelashes gathering together into the shape of a question Yui can't understand.

Hayasaka takes a breath. "Do you want to kiss again?"

Yui looks at him for a long moment - the bright shine of his hair, the intense focus in his eyes, the unconscious part of his lips. The curve of his throat down to his shirt, the shadow the fabric casts on his collarbones. All the separate pieces that make Hayasaka who he is, all the details so familiar Yui has never really looked at them properly before, all of them enough to wipe all coherency from his mind except for one thing.

"Yes," Yui says.


End file.
